Religion: Theologians Wanted

What’s wrong with U.S. theological seminaries and divinity schools? Plenty, charges Hartford Seminary Foundation’s Peter Berger, 33, a Lutheran sociologist whose vivid attacks (The Precarious Vision, The Noise of Solemn Assemblies) on the organizational church are fast earning him a reputation as a kind of Connecticut Kierkegaard. Writing in the July issue of Theology Today, Berger argues that the seminaries have become so concerned with trying to provide for the short-term institutional needs of the church that they are in danger of forgetting what a Protestant minister really ought to be: first and foremost, a theological scholar.

Oratory & Ceremonies. Trouble is, says Berger, that theology has become “dysfunctional” to the demands of the religious establishment. At present, neither church nor congregation expects its ministerial middlemen to know much theology. Since denominational differences among the big churches in an ecumenical age are less important than in the past, “the theological erudition of the minister is of only peripheral significance in terms of the expectations the organizations must have of him. What is important is that he effectively promote the program of the organization in a situation in which, inevitably, he is competing with others for members.” Too often, says Berger, the minister’s flock seeks merely “edifying oratory, the competent performance of certain vaguely understood ceremonies, the exercise of moral influence upon the young, personal counseling especially in times of crisis, and last but not least, the halfway plausible exhibition of a morally exemplary life which one cannot seriously emulate but with which one can vicariously identify.”

The Organization Minister. These institutional demands have had their effect on the seminaries. In the interest of “making Christianity relevant” and “vitalizing the curriculum,” Berger charges, the divinity schools have tended to shunt the theology aside and substitute a welter of courses in sociology, psychology, church management and literature. The end product of such education is likely to be that thoroughly un-Christian figure—the organization minister.

Apart from this unattractive prospect. Sociologist Berger insists that the ministry cannot possibly be relevant without a theological understanding of its role in the world. Christianity must penetrate “the consciousness of this age”; as he puts it, “the theologian is an indispensable participant in this task of Christian intellectual penetration.”

If the seminaries are to uphold the old Protestant tradition, he says, they must rehabilitate the ideal of the ministerial scholar—and provide him with the right kind of education. “The traditional theological disciplines,” Berger insists, “must regain their central position . . . There must be an end to the grotesque spectacle of a Protestant ministry that continues to maintain the primacy of Scripture for Christian thought and life—and is unable to read the same Scripture except through the pale mirror of translations.”

Berger admits that his concept of more theology for the seminaries is going against the stream of the time. But he insists that it does not have to be a Utopian hope. The demand for ministers exceeds the supply, and the churches have no choice but to accept the kind of clergyman that the divinity schools choose to turn out. “This means that theological seminaries, if they can assert even a modicum of independence vis-a-vis the organization, have much leeway for doing at least some of the things that their Christian reason advocates they should do.”